Customer Reviews

Mouchette (Criterion Collection)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This superb film is one of the most moving examples not only of the genuine spiritual quality of Bresson's work, but also of the unique beauty of the amazing 'flat' images that Bresson created with a 50mm lens. The first scene alone, with the two rival men spying on each other, is worth the price of the cassette. But there is so much more to come.
This film has a lovely naturalistic surface feel to it, but as with all of Bresson's work, we are really watching a supernatural reality. As the unhappy story of the poor, teenage, village girl,Mouchette, unfolds, this naturalism becommes more and more haunted by the energy of the dark spiritual condition of the people that surround her. This condition is as horrid and nightmarish as a Bosch painting of hell, but of course Bresson never uses anything other than the most ordinary naturalistic images. This dark environment drives Mouchette to the point where she chooses to take her own life. But the extended scene of Mouchette's suicide is, by the simplest of means, made so incredibly moving and disarming in its innocence that, even if you can not make sense of it, you can not fail to feel that you have witnessed a spiritual event. No one but Robert Bresson could have achieved this. Please, even if you do not like my review, watch this film by one of the few true geniuses of cinematic art.

The first scene is of a bird caught in a snare fluttering madly to escape, then a hand rescues the bird and lets it free.

Bresson depicts the utter malice than can lay behind a rural community to the abject meanness of poverty.

Asked to sing along in school, her voice was pretty until she hit the high notes and then she was ostracized by her teacher. What was there ever in her life to sing about? Altho at home, doing her chores her voice shines with sweetness

And her only moment of joy on the amusement park car flirting with possibly the only smile in her life, taken away in exchange for a night with a poacher.

It's amazing how her everyday face is a frown, except when she is tending to her dying mother when her face is beautifically transformed to absolute love and adoration.

And I don't believe Bresson asks you to feel sorry for her. He is just showing us.

Mouchette finally needs to confess something to her mother, possibly the only time she has asked for help or advice but at that moment , her mother dies.
That day, an old lady in town gives mouchette a shroud for her mother and a beautiful dress, the kind you might wear to confirmation or a baptism. She has had only had tattered rags and ill fitting clunky shoes all her life.

Altho my description may sound melodramatic, the movie is not.It doesn't try to play on your emotions.

The last scene is haunting and unforgettable.

This is a most beautiful movie.

i've only watched it twice but so many moments are burned into my memory forever. it's something ineffable in the tilt of every shot, the slow, predestined precision of every movement of the figures ('actors' is not the right word for a bresson movie), the supernatural evocativeness of every facial expression, the densely but subtly arranged, teasing interplay of sound and image that builds up through the whole film until both sound and image come to an end in the only suicide on film that is truly a miracle. each moment is an icon painted on slate and clearly visible only by the light of a candle in its own chamber in a dark and infinite church to which my mind will always have access though i'll never know the way there.

I would tend to agree with the general sentiment expressed by the previous reviewers. The overall unrelenting misery of Mouchette's existence is somehow uplifting. Her burning determination not to be subdued other than on her own terms shines through. The final scene is both disturbing and absolutely believable.

I have been to such villages.

I'd seen a bunch of Bresson films before I ever heard of Mouchette, and had always regarded him as the director who, while I wouldn't necessarily want to watch his films to the exclusion of anyone else's, speaks to what's best in me; Bresson's work has an uncompromising directness that no other film-maker has ever matched, in my experience. Watching his films, you feel that something is being imparted to you that you needed to know; in this respect, he's utterly unlike the vast majority of directors, who seek merely to provide diversion and laffs. His influence on Scorsese, Fassbinder and Kaurismaki is undeniable, and Paul Schrader has blatantly ripped him off on more than one occasion (though we forgive Schrader because he is himself such a good director).

Mouchette is not the most famous of Bresson's films but it's one of the best I've seen - though admittedly this is misleading, as most of Bresson's films after the late 40s are masterpieces. Mouchette's life is almost unrelentingly awful; her mother is dying, and most of her verbal contact with Mouchette consists of orders to look after the baby and get her some more gin; her father takes whatever money she earns, and her brother never says anything at all. She lives in a grotty village in a totally unattractive-looking part of Provence, where the local boys have nothing better to do than drop their pants in her direction, and where her sole recreation is throwing mud at her schoolmates. Nadine Nortier, one of a string of non-professional actors to be burdened with carrying a Bresson movie, is stunning as the teenaged Mouchette. Few cinematic leading ladies have been so utterly unglamorous. Her hair is straggly and greasy-looking, her clothes are outsized hand-me-downs and her shoes are enormous clogs that clack loudly as she walks, yet Nortier never loses contact with Mouchette's livid anger and spiritual dignity. When professional actresses cry, they tend to crease up their faces and emote; Nortier stares blankly into the middle distance as the tears stream down her face.

Mouchette is an extraordinary film, not one to be watched as part of a night of videos, unless the other videos also happen to be directed by Bresson. It's one of Bresson's most unrelentingly sombre films, but the outcome, although tragic, is not nihilistic (as, arguably, was the director's later study of disaffected youth, "Le Diable probablement"). Not a feelgood movie, but by no means a nothing-means-anything movie, either, which is a considerable achievement by anyone's standards, and by the standards of contemporary movies, an outright miracle.

Robert Bresson is a great film maker. He influenced all those who followed him (even though no one could truly imitate Bresson), and he changed the way we viewed culture before him. A modest artist perhaps, but one whose work blew open doors that had remained shut. He dedicate himself to themes film rarely dealt with: suicide, religion, rape. MOUCHETTE deals with all three. Too often described as a Jensenist -- and Bresson himself encouraged such a qualification, Bresson is in fact a neo-Baroque film maker. His worldview is dark, yet never bleak. Mouchette kills herself yes, still Bresson makes her a saint. Not a martyr but a modern saint. Opposites collide all the time in this film where syntheses never come easy (if they come at all). Bresson is one of the few film makers one we recognize immediately: one can tell a Bresson image the same way one recognizes a musical score by Mozart. This is the sign of genius. Bresson created his medium, it did not create him. - Antonio D'Alfonso (1 March 2000).

Mouchette is without any doubt one of the best films ever made or to be made. In almost sacral serenity it shows us the last three days of the life of a twelve year old very poor village girl. Mouchette survives in the strenght of her character and soul, even when we have to watch her commit suicide. I remember, in the seventies Mrs.Susan Sonntag appriciated this film very much. The story cannot be told by its plot, because it is the most original way of filmmaking Bresson invented, that makes us understand, what happenes to Mouchette. There is nothing comparable to Bressons work, which is deeply transcendental. It has religious impact and surves us with great precision.

Bresson sets up every shot as if it were a painting. The composition throughout is beautiful. The acting is typical Bresson fare: blank, subdued, but suggestive of enormous repressed emotion. Jean-Luc Godard's second wife has a small role as a sought after bar-maid. The lead performance is flawless. The ending is acutely disturbing. Wonderful wonderful film.